Strike team season is just around the corner, when firefighters in small local departments get ready to deploy around the state. Andres Avila, Chief of the Anderson Valley Fire Department, compares the season to a rapidly heating pot of popcorn. In late June, he noted, “We’re starting to get little fires, but as we go into July, it’ll be everywhere. We’ll have fires popping all over the state.” If he gets the call, Avila may send three or four firefighters and an engine anywhere in California. But he can also expect to welcome firefighters from elsewhere, if his district is overwhelmed.

That’s where California’s mutual aid system comes in — a model for disaster response agencies all over the world, according to Justin Buckingham, a Battalion Chief at the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority. The state formalized its Master Mutual Aid Agreement, or the concept of neighbors helping neighbors, in 1950, as part of the state’s Civil Defense and Disaster Relief Plan. Congress provided support in 1970, after a massive wildland fire in Southern California. That’s when agencies began to hone in on incident command, multi-agency coordination, and sharing new technologies and strategies. The concept spread to Northern California in 1987. The massive wildfires of 2017, including the Redwood Complex and the Thomas Fires, led to ongoing state budget allocations, beginning with $25 million, to pre-position responders, or make sure they were already on-site when a disaster was brewing. Advanced weather forecasting helps, along with constantly improving communications and logistics.

The now highly organized mutual aid system means that almost half of the firefighters on a campaign fire — those that require a massive military-style response, with base camps, platoons, and elite units — are from small, local, volunteer fire departments. The Fire Districts Association of California recently raised the alarm about the strain that such deployments place on cash-strapped agencies. In a February, 2025 white paper called “Fighting Fire with Funding: The Urgent Need for Adequate Fire Service Resources in California,” the FDAC argued that, while demand for services and costs for equipment continue to rise, funding has not kept up.

Mitch Franklin, the Chief of the Hopland Fire Department, knows this well. Franklin is the County Coordinator with the California Office of Emergency Services, which means that it’s up to him to keep track of who and what is available to deploy. Every Monday, the other fire chiefs in the county use an app developed by Anderson Valley firefighter Fred Ehnow, to update the status of their equipment and personnel. Not only do they have to be ready to help their neighbors, but they have to be sure they can maintain coverage of their own districts when their engines and firefighters are drawn down.

*Hopland Fire Dept Chief Mitch Franklin with the 2008 Type III engine his department sends on strike team assignments*

“They are compensated,” Franklin acknowledges; and fairly, at that. While firefighters are out on a campaign, which can add up to 95 days out of the year, they are CAL OES (Office of Emergency Services ) employees, and they earn state firefighter wages. The state also pays an hourly rate for the engines, though recently FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) proposed a drastic reduction in the rate.

That would be a severe blow to the mostly volunteer Hopland department, which had to freeze two paid positions and sell some equipment last year. “We’re relying heavily on strike team revenue to keep the lights on,” Franklin said bluntly. “Thank God for Measure P and ToT, and the little bit of Prop 172. If we lost that, we’d have to shut the doors here.” The ToT, or transient occupancy tax, is collected at private campgrounds and RV parks. About $600,000 a year is split among the county’s 22 fire departments.

In Anderson Valley, strike team revenue is useful, but not a lifeline. “It’s definitely helping,” Avila said. “We achieve some goals quicker, not enough to sustain this department off of it. It’s another way to help us augment sending that apparatus out, but we do have to maintain the equipment,” which is expensive. He thinks there has been “some good progress” on negotiating the proposed reduction in the state’s reimbursement fees for local engines that are used on campaign fires, adding, “We want to help our neighbors out, but not where we’re bringing our own district down, as far as cost.”

Neighbors helping neighbors is a constant cost-benefit analysis, and an ongoing process of negotiation. While it can be risky to send firefighters and engines to another part of the state, there is real security in knowing that the risk is reciprocal.

“California is really built on the mutual aid system,” Buckingham, of UVFA, reflected. That’s because no one department, not even those in large metropolitan areas, can be ready for a massive catastrophe at all times. “We get our money back that we put in when we go out of county,” he said of his agency. “You can make a little bit of money for the department, but generally speaking, it’s just for the good of the state.” As a strike team leader who has led firefighters on campaign fires, he believes the experience drives home the whole point of the mutual aid system. “The idea that we all need to pitch in and help each other out, because we can’t deal with these large events by ourselves, is what drives people’s participation in the program,” he said.

Avila concurs, adding that fighting intense blazes in a neighbor’s backyard makes firefighters better at defending their own. “Hopefully fires here are infrequent,” he said. “But if you go out on strike team, for a long time, for multiple years, you come back with that knowledge. That is way better than a training environment or sitting in a classroom and talking about it. You get the benefit of seasoned firefighters that you can bring home.”